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“And did he look like me?” I asked honestly curious.
She nodded, but she still didn’t look as happy as she had earlier. “It did, except he didn’t have your broken nose or scars, and his eyes had been darker, same with the hair.”
Her words intrigued me, and now that my curiosity was aroused the strange feeling I had when she first told me was fading. I wanted to hear more. Before I could ask though, she took a deep shuddering breath.
“However, the funny thing is, I knew. I knew that the face was wrong. I knew your nose was broken, and about your hair and eyes being darker. When I looked at Matteo’s likeness of you, I felt as if… as if I recognized you. Here.” She pointed at her heart, then gave a low, deprecating chuckle. “I even called it Thor.” Her words made me smile because they explained how she had known my name.
She took a deep breath. “I’m telling you this because I want you to know I believe there is a connection between us—a deep connection. I may not know what a szaria is, but I know we were meant to be together.”
“Holly.” I pulled her toward me and gave her a long kiss, and by the way she responded to me, I knew the attraction between us was mutual. No, more than that, my heart rate increased at the sudden hope that maybe one day she would feel the szaria bond the same way I did.
We stayed in thehot springs for a long time, having sex until I was so spent, I fell asleep in his arms when he carried me back to the cave and didn’t wake until the next morning, when we made love again.
Slowly, a routine emerged as Thor had to pick up his duties again. Guard duty took him away from me at all kinds of hours during the night, and hunting and scouting kept him busy during the day. I was left to find things to occupy my time.
The first couple of days were easy. Since I had no clothes besides Thor’s overlarge shirts, I tried my hand at sewing, and discovered that I was actually quite good at it. Stitching leather was a lot harder than regular fabric, but once I figured it out, it was calming and even fun.
Bravely and encouraged by Thor, I took my sewing kit and ventured into the larger cavern—what they called the main chamber—where the other men were giving me respectful company. Slowly, I learned their names and even picked up a tentative friendship with the lizard-man, whose real name was Sel-Gor. I truly won him over when I discovered wild basil onone of the walks I took with Thor. I encouraged Sel-Gor to add some to his stew even though it was already pretty good for what it was.
Thor had fashioned a pair of comfy leather boots for me that fit like a glove. The first evening he gave them to me, I talked him into taking me for a walk into the forest below our cave.
“Holly, it’s dangerous out there,” he cautioned.
I managed not to roll my eyes. “I can’t stay cooped up in the cave forever, Thor. Besides, I survived for two weeks on my own out there.”
“Barely,” he reminded me.
I sighed. “Fine.. But look, I need to stretch my legs.” I fluttered my eyelashes. “Please? What can happen with you beside me, oh mighty saber-toothed-cat killer?”
I knew he wanted me to stay in the cave where it was safe, and maybe the old me would have been happy with that, but I doubted it. Without a phone, tablet, or laptop, life quickly became pretty boring when one didn’t do much besides sit around. And I wasn’t the type to be happy simply mending every clan member’s clothes just because I was a female and a bunch of hunky aliens were asking me to.
“I lost the life I was used to,” I pressed, “and in that life, I studied this era. I’m a paleontologist, Thor. I finally have the chance to see the things I only ever read about. Please, I need to see this world, explore it.”
“Fine, but we’re sticking close to the cave,” he relented. I gave him a hug and a kiss, and together, we began exploring the surrounding forest. It was on one of those excursions I found the basil, followed by some root vegetables on the next.
One afternoon, I heard a familiar sound and stopped Thor midstride. “Hold on.”
He pulled his blaster. “What is it?”
I cocked my head and signaled him to follow me as I stealthily snuck through the thick forest until I found them. Asteriornis maastrichtensis, also known as the wonderchicken. The forefather of chickens had lived among the dinosaurs and, by all rights, should have gone extinct with them but either didn’t or became reborn in the form of our regular chickens. The ones I saw here looked more like a cross between a pheasant and a quail and were also slightly larger than our house chickens. Still, they were unmistakably chickens.
“You have a good ear,” Thor whispered, pulling his bow from his back, but I stalled his hand, shaking my head.
Not many fossils of these birds had been found, but here, I saw a group of at least thirty right in front of me, indicating they were plentiful.
Thor looked at me questioningly. “They make for good eating.”
“They do other good things, too,” I whispered back. “Do you think you and your warriors can catch a few of those birds for me?”
“As in alive?” He looked skeptical, but I nodded.
Trying to prove his point with a wistful glance at the chickens, he clapped his hands and they flew off. Dang, I hadn’t considered that they could fly. The chickens I knew didn’t. Then again, they had been domesticated over many years. An image of Fred, our estate manager, came to me.
“What are you doing, Fred?”ten-year-old me asked the older man, wide-eyed.
“Clipping their wings, sweetie. See like this,” he answered.
The human mind is a funny thing, a trough of knowledge retained over many years, sometimes we try hard as hell to remember things, and other times, they just come back unbidden.
